Digital Nation: a Provocative Film from Douglas Rushkoff

Twenty years ago, Douglas Rushkoff was an advocate for the new digital media that his generation had embraced. Today, he’s not so sure that all is good in the “digital nation”. Along with Rachel Dretzin he has produced and narrated a 78 min. film, Digital Nation: life on the virtual frontier, on both the advantages and the pitfalls of digital culture. The film was made for the PBS program Frontline. It is divided into 9 chapters, making it easy to break into chunks that cover different sets of issues. Extended interviews are available for many of the commentators in the film, and hundreds of contributors have uploaded their stories to the PBS website. The 9 chapters are:

Chapter 1: Distracted by everything. M.I.T. students are among the world’s smartest and most wired. They constantly multitask with their tech tools.
Chapter 2: What’s it doing to their brains? Tests given Stanford’s multitaskers yield troubling discoveries. Other research into Net use and the brain raises more questions.
Chapter 3: South Korea’s gaming craze. Some cautionary lessons from a country where Internet addiction has become a health crisis.
Chapter 4: Teaching with technology. Teachers are embracing digital media – ‘it keeps students engaged; new skills are needed for a new age.’ But is there a catch?
Chapter 5: The dumbest generation? The debate has just begun on whether we are losing as much as we’re gaining in 24/7 wired world.
Chapter 6: Relationships. Millions of people are inhabiting the Net as if it were a real place, satisfying the urge to connect to others in online games, virtual worlds.
Chapter 7: Virtual worlds. Second life offers a totally new reality for humans, says it’s creator–and IBM has begun shifting it’s meetings into this virtual space.
Chapter 8: Can virtual experience change us? The U.S. military is using virtual spaces for PTSD therapy and for flying drones in Iraq while based in a room in Nevada.
Chapter 9: Where are we headed? A school is organized around learning through video games–may be it’s students are getting something we are’nt yet able to measure or recognize.

This is a terrific piece of work, a big picture view of what is happening to all of us. I highly recommend it. To watch it online, click here.  (Via Gerrit Visser) (GW)

Tagged as: Digital culture, Film, PBS, Video